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On a rainy Monday morning in Hilo, the line of students entering Waiākea High School’s library was out the door. As dozens of teens filed into the large room decorated with paper lanterns and colorful flower cutouts, librarian Leslie Fukushima greeted each of them by name, offering fist bumps and words of encouragement.

“Spring break is coming,” Fukushima enthusiastically reminded a group of girls headed for a cluster of tables in the back of the room. “You bring the fun,” she warmly told another student.

By the time morning recess ended, more than 30 kids had filled the library, completing their homework with friends and pulling out books from tall wooden shelves that lined the back walls to browse during the short break.

In the coming months, the library’s shelves — filled with 26,662 books, DVDs and other materials — will be empty. And Fukushima, after nearly 25 years as a school librarian, will need to pivot to a new job.

The high school plans to convert its library into a health education center next year, training students for careers like nursing and physical therapy. Principal Kelcy Koga said he’ll likely downsize the library and move it into a spare classroom, donating extra books to teachers, students and community members.

The change will leave the Big Island — and its 22,000 public school students — with only one certified school librarian, currently employed at Kealakehe High School in Kailua-Kona.

The number of school librarians in the state has been shrinking for years, with principals citing budget shortfalls and a growing reliance on digital devices. In 2012 the Hawaiʻi Department of Education employed 192 school librarians. This year, the state was down to 74 librarians, 60 of whom were certified by having both a teaching credential and a master’s degree in library and information science.

A research project from San Jose State University found that Hawaiʻi ranked 41st in the nation when it came to the ratio of students to full-time librarians in schools.

Educators say the decline in trained librarians is a growing problem as students struggle to find accurate sources and develop strong research skills in an age of rampant misinformation. While schools can still have libraries without trained staff, the job of connecting students with online databases or helping them find new books often falls on teachers, who are stretched thin, Fukushima said. 

Access to librarians is particularly scarce on the outer islands and in low-income schools. Only 15% of schools on Maui and 5% of Big Island schools have a certified librarian, compared to nearly a third of Oʻahu schools. There were no public schools on Kauaʻi with a certified librarian on campus this year. 

Two bills in the Legislature would provide funding for more library staff, though some advocates worry that it may be too little, too late. After years of cutbacks, there may not be enough experienced librarians in the state to fill the proposed positions even with additional funding.

“Nobody in Waiāhole Valley would ever want to grow up to be a school librarian, because there’s no other job,” said Selena Mobbs, a librarian at Waiāhole Elementary School. “This one’s taken.” 

Uneven Access Across The State

On Maui, Laila Popata quickly saw the consequences when her son’s elementary school lost its certified librarian. Her son stopped regularly visiting the library with his class, she said, and no longer brought books home to read. 

A librarian herself at King Kekaulike High School, Popata made sure her son had plenty to read at home. But she knows that’s not the reality for all families, who don’t always have age-appropriate books or the time to take their kids to the public library.

“The health of the whole school improves so much when you have a librarian,” she said. 

Before 2004, every school in the state received money to hire a school librarian. After the state gave school principals more flexibility that year to craft their budgets, not all chose to keep a librarian on staff. 

This year, only one in four schools — the majority of which are at the elementary level — have certified librarians. 

It can be a difficult decision for schools to keep libraries open, said Board of Education Chair Roy Takumi. While Takumi would like to see every school have a fully-staffed library, principals have the ultimate say in their budget priorities and sometimes forgo a librarian in favor of other teaching positions or learning programs, he added.

At Waiākea High School, social studies teacher Dana Maeda said she’s brought her classes for regular visits at the library since she started teaching in 1990. It’s important for students to have a quiet space to study and find reliable information, she said, and the library is a valuable resource for new teachers who aren’t sure how to teach research skills.

Researchers also say the media literacy skills libraries can offer students are increasingly important as teens struggle to recognize misinformation online. In a 2021 study from Stanford University, 96% of high school students were unable to identify that a website focused on climate change was backed by the fossil fuel industry.

Across the state, roughly 20% of low-income schools employ certified librarians. 

In comparison, some private schools have two or more libraries on their campuses. Punahou School has five full-time librarians who teach classes, help students with research and maintain a collection of more than 60,000 books, school spokesperson Robert Gelber said.

In some cases, schools keep their libraries open even when they don’t have a staff librarian and rely on teachers or assistants to check out books and maintain the space, said Joanna Dunn, a library media services educational specialist at DOE. But those staff members don’t receive the same specialized training as librarians and don’t always know about their libraries’ resources. 

When schools cut their librarians, kids miss out on important learning opportunities, said Stacey Aldrich, who leads the Hawaii State Public Library System. Public libraries also help kids develop a love for reading, she said, but school libraries focus on developing research and critical thinking skills that might not be covered in class.

A dozen DOE schools have public libraries located on their campuses, but only Kahuku High and Intermediate staffs the space with their own librarian dedicated to serving students and teachers, Aldrich added. In the other 11 schools, she said, the public librarians try their best to support the community and the school, but resources are stretched thin. 

The public library system has also struggled to fill vacant positions, particularly on the outer islands. 

“If you lose parts of that ecosystem, it starts to show,” Aldrich said.  

Evolving Roles Of Libraries

At Waiākea High School, Fukushima addressed a small group of students visiting the library during their social studies class.

“Does somebody’s discomfort with a book mean that that book should be removed and it’s not available?” she asked the class, holding up a copy of the children’s poetry book “Where the Sidewalk Ends.” 

For the next hour, Fukushima led a discussion on book bans, encouraging students to consider why certain books have been removed from libraries on the mainland and asking them who, if anyone, should have the power to make these decisions.

Book bans have been at the forefront of national discussions around the changing nature of libraries — even becoming a controversial topic of Hawaiʻi legislation this year — but the expectations locally stand in contrast to librarians in Florida who were not only expected to removed banned books from their shelves but police their removal from classrooms as well.

There are other challenging modern issues though that school librarians everywhere have had to address.

When Popata first began working at Kekaulike High School in 2004, she taught her students to check the credibility of a website by looking for spelling errors on the homepage or seeing if an article had a publication date. 

Now, she said, it’s much more difficult to decipher what information is reliable online, and students are more likely to rely on artificial intelligence than their media literacy skills. She encourages students to do a deep dive into who’s publishing a website and makes sure they know how to use the online research databases purchased by the school.

Teachers can also show students how to write proper citations or conduct research for a senior project, Popata added, but they only have so much time to get through a lesson.   

“For me to take on these pieces takes it off the plate of the teacher,” she said. 

Mobbs, the librarian at Waiāhole Elementary, said she’s also needed to get creative when it comes to encouraging kids to read. She helps students download ebooks on their personal devices, and she’s tried to make the library more interactive by asking kids to shelve books based on themes, rather than the Dewey Decimal System.

Even as librarians are responding to technological changes and new forms of information, Popata said her ultimate responsibility of helping kids develop a love of reading has remained the same. She’s created a new library display highlighting books trending on TikTok, and she found success in connecting students with books that have turned into popular movies or Netflix series. 

Last year, students checked out more than 4,000 books from Kekaulike High School’s library. 

“I definitely believe we have a reading culture at the school,” she said. 

More Funding, More Positions?

Lawmakers are now considering two bills to hire more certified librarians over the next two years. While legislators haven’t decided how much they would appropriate to the department, educators say providing extra funds and raising awareness about the role of librarians in schools is an important step. 

Both bills passed through the House earlier this month. One bill, HB 961, passed through the Senate Education Committee on Wednesday, while the other is still awaiting a hearing.

“Just the awareness of what librarians can do is important because if teachers, or importantly, administrators, don’t know how to use their librarians, then they may not see the need for it,” said Meera Garud, an instructor in the Library and Information Science Program at the University of Hawaiʻi Mānoa.

The program typically graduates one to three students specializing in running school libraries each year, Garud said, although fewer people have expressed interest over the last 20 years since schools are no longer required to hire librarians. 

While the bills are an important step, Mobbs said she’s not sure how many people will be willing to take the positions proposed in the pilot programs, especially since House Bill 961 would require librarians to split their time between multiple schools in a complex on Oʻahu or on an outer island.

The Legislature’s schedule could also make it more difficult for the education department to hire qualified librarians for the proposed pilots, Dunn said. By the time bills get signed into law in the summer, she added, most schools have hired their staff for the upcoming year, and experienced librarians will have already found jobs for the fall. 

At Waiākea High School, Fukushima is still considering her options for next year. There are no open school librarian positions on the island, she added, so she could either remain at Waiākea to teach English or find another teaching job that could incorporate some of her skills as a librarian. 

Despite her uncertainty about the future, Fukushima spent a recent morning adding new books to the school’s collection and creating a colorful display highlighting coming-of-age novels she hopes will appeal to teens. The library may no longer exist next year, she said, but she still wants students to have every opportunity to read and appreciate the space. 

“It’s a great place,” Fukushima said. “I felt like I could be here forever.”   

Civil Beat’s education reporting is supported by a grant from Chamberlin Family Philanthropy.